


Hikikomori

by MiriamKenneath



Category: Ringu | The Ring - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anger, Gen, Pandemics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:14:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24201889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiriamKenneath/pseuds/MiriamKenneath
Summary: What if Sadako were a young woman living in the year 2020?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: Villain of My Own Story Exchange 2020





	Hikikomori

**Author's Note:**

  * For [summoninglupine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/summoninglupine/gifts).



‘Look at me,’ Sadako whispers to her reflection in the mirror. Dark, haunted eyes framed by long dark hair stare back at her.

The hair – not a hint of grey. That is her biggest point of pride. She has not cut it in four years, not once, and she’s learnt that her hair will grow to a length just past her waist and no longer.

She was going to be a musical theatre star. She’d been cast in a lead role. Sneer all you like at Les Miz’s Eponines, Wicked’s Elphabas, Evita’s Evas and Frozen’s Elsas, but roles like that take both talent and hard work, and Sadako did more than her fair share of time in the proverbial trenches. Then, the theatres went dark. _Delayed opening, Sadako,_ the producers told her. _It’s social distancing, not_ _the end of the world. We’ll come back from this – you’ll see!_ Two months later, she was informed that the production would be cancelled permanently.

She hasn’t come back from that. She’s become certain she never will.

‘Look at me,’ she whispers. Is this her reflection she sees speaking those words, or…is her face the mirror?

She lives with her widowed father now, just another boomerang baby with nowhere to hang framed records of her many academic and professional accomplishments save the claustrophobic walls of her childhood bedroom. Work – or, rather, _paid_ work – people love consuming entertainment for free, fancy that! – has dried up like water in the Sahara, and so has any motivation Sadako might’ve had to do anything besides sit in her room and stew in the congealing black pudding of her countless grievances.

She put everything into succeeding in her career. _Everything._ And look at how that’d gone. Success was never under her control in the first place. The decked was always stacked against her. The world, cruel fate, could take it all away in an instant.

And how she’d sacrificed! No property. No savings. Unemployed and single. No children. She has no natural ability to give birth to children anyway: positive diagnosis of Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.

The AIS is probably why she’s so tall. She’s the only one capable of retrieving items from the top shelves of the kitchen cupboards without a step stool. Shame being a tall woman isn’t necessarily an asset in musical theatre.

‘Look at me,’ Sadako whispers. Her skin is milk-pale porcelain from lack of sunlight. She rarely goes out anymore, full stop, so she’s not afraid of falling ill. In fact, a part of her wishes she _would_ become ill. At least illness would give her something to do. And maybe it’d inspire temporary pity, since she has no illusions about love. Love, ha! No one feels much of anything for Sadako these days besides contempt, and fuck them, she doesn’t want their love anyway. If she had to choose, she’d rather their hatred, their _fear_.

What she really wants, though? What she really, _really_ wants? She wants her leading role back. She wants her star-studded opening. Of all things, to be upstaged by an as-of-yet incurable, pandemic virus – !

If she were an incurable, pandemic virus, Sadako thinks, she would be an invisible shut-in no longer. She would be everywhere at once, and they would _never_ stop talking about her. _Yes._ Her name would be on everyone’s lips, and she could hurt all of the people who had ever dared hurt her. There were lots of them, none of them innocent. They would never stop fearing her. She could consume the world.

‘Look at me,’ she whispers as the reflection in the mirror dissolves. This is how it begins.


End file.
